Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Brooklyn is 6 months old

So sad, my sweet baby girl is 6 months old already! It feels like it was just a month or two ago we were in the hospital with a newborn, but I think it live in a weird time warp world where things happen at hyper speed without me realizing. So, yep, here we are at 6 months. Brooklyn is so sweet and snuggly I just want to eat her up. But, now that she has figured out how to get around on here own, she doesn't have as much time for snuggling, and would prefer to chase after the toys her siblings leave lying around. That's right, Brooklyn is crawling. I'm sure a lot of people would say it's not officially a crawl, but I think it is. It's a half crawl half army crawl scooting thing, but she is fast and always gets where she wants to go. She can't sit up unassisted, or even using her hands as support, but I have a feeling it won't be long because she keeps pushing herself back onto her hip like she's trying to sit. Megan crawled before she sat, and she learned how to sit by just pushing herself back onto her butt while crawling one day, so I expect Brooklyn to be the same way.
For a while she was sleeping really well and only waking once or twice a night to eat and go right back down, and would be in bed about 12 hours a night. Now, she totally sucks at this sleeping thing. At first I think it was due to teething because her bottom two teeth have cut through. Then I got sick, so we were wondering if she was just extra hungry. I wasn't eating much at all, so I'm sure the quality of my breastmilk was kind of crappy, but now that I am at least eating a little more, her sleeping habits are still awful. Today though, she seems to be running a fever, so I guess she is coming down with something. I miss the days of being able to put her to bed at 7:30pm and know I would only see her a couple times before morning. Now she is up and down all night, and I'm exhausted because of it. Not only am I trying to recover from an illness, but Brooklyn wanting to nurse at least 12 times a day is sucking the life out of me. But, as Sean pointed out, our only other option is to try to give her some formula (she hates bottles by the way), and I'm not ok with ending breastfeeding because it's gotten hard, so we're plugging along. If everyone could pray she starts sleeping better again, that would be awesome!
Even though I complain about the crappy sleeping, I do love nursing Brooklyn in the middle of the night when the house is quiet and dark. She is so peaceful and content it almost makes me forget how exhausted I am and how much I'd rather be sleeping.
Brooklyn still hasn't had anything other than breastmilk, but I definitely think we're close to introducing some solid foods to her. She is very interested in what we are eating at meal times, and tries to grab our stuff if we are holding her. Unfortunately, our high chair died. It survived 7 years and 4 kids, but we just couldn't make it last through one more kiddo. So I ordered a new one, and Brooklyn's entry into solids will have to wait until it arrives. I tried to find a replacement cover since that was the really horrible part, but our high chair was such a dinosaur, there aren't replacement covers out there for it.
Brooklyn loves her older siblings. Even Jackson, as long as he's not trying to sit on her. She thinks Nathan is hilarious, and Emma can calm her down almost as well as I can when Brooklyn gets upset.
These first 6 months have passed by in such an exciting blur, I'm sure the next 6 will be more of the same. Even though we didn't plan to have Brooklyn, I LOVE having her as part of our family, and cannot imagine life without her now. Thanks to God who knew we needed Brooklyn, even though we didn't.